[CAUT] 1/4 tone piano conversion

[Jim Busby]

Cool!

Chris Fingers (Denver Co) has a piano that is straight strung (of course) and I'm not absolutely sure but it seemed to be 31 note division of the octave. I think it had 96 keys too. He had the music for it on the piano to try. It seems it was a special Grotrian. Maybe Chris H. remembers. That is the most bizarre "piano" thing I've ever played.

Jim Busby

________________________________
From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Fred Sturm
Sent: Monday, December 03, 2007 4:34 PM
To: College and University Technicians
Subject: Re: [CAUT] 1/4 tone piano conversion


On Dec 3, 2007, at 10:27 AM, Andrew Anderson wrote:


He explained it to me as an upright that had been converted.  Quite possibly it was two pianos as described.  I'll have to pin him down on more details.  My first reaction was, you can't do that with this type of piano, you'll have to buy a Sauter Microtonal piano (problem is it does 1/16" tone)
http://www.sauter-pianos.de/english/pianos/microtone.html.
He was insistent on the possibility and then I explained how bass strings would break and how the treble would go dead.  Not having much experience here I said I would inquire into the possibility of re-scaling the piano to do the job.  I think I have the answer though. :-)  Much easier to do two especially when playing...imagine one octave every 24 keys.  He could...

Andrew Anderson

The link from Sauter includes the following quote:
"Quarter tone instruments have already been around for a long time."
I was curious, so I Googled quarter tone piano. A couple links:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,738789,00.html (Time Magazine 1930 article, two keyboard instrument made by Baldwin)

http://www.jstor.org/view/00274631/ap020048/02a00050/0 (Musical Quarterly 1926 article, three keyboard instrument made by German firm Forster)

        That's a much time as I had (between tunings - mental health break), but there were probably a few more specific pianos and designs. Along with sites talking about two pianos tuned 1/4 tone apart and references to electronics.

Regards,
Fred Sturm
University of New Mexico
fssturm at unm.edu<mailto:fssturm at unm.edu>

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